Fair play to Marco Silva, he's managed to build a brand for himself and massive reputation on very little evidence that he's any good. So much so that he's probably going to get a massive job at Everton and everyone thinks he's going to be the Messiah there after he's relegated Hull and would have taken Watford down. His management/PR are fantastic.

If we lose someone like Dunk and don’t recruit well, then the margins are fine enough for us to be right in the mix.

Aside from that, then statistically at least one of the promoted clubs would fail and Cardiff are most likely.

Watford, Saints, Huddersfield and good old chaos club West Ham would be other contenders.

We're right in the mix, even with Dunk, from day one 2018/19 season. That's not pessimism, Hughton will quite rightly say similar. The moment PL clubs of Brighton's size think otherwise, that can spell a case of the WBA/Southampton/Stoke's.

Clearly player (and in some cases manager) recruitment makes this such a hypothetical question when talking about all the teams mentioned so far, but putting that to one side for now I genuinely think Burnley may struggle next season. Firstly because the Europa League could take its toll on their squad size but equally, while taking nothing away from their achievements this season they only scored 36 goals (only 4 more than the average of the bottom 6 clubs this season) and they found a good habit of grinding out draws or wins by the odd goal. That could easily go the other way next season if their defence struggles to hold firm like they have done this year. Even more so if Dyche is tempted into leaving.

Second season syndrome is a cliché. There is no evidence for it. Wike sets out SSS since 1982 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_season_syndrome - and this shows that there is no SSS in PL since QPR in 2013. To be fair, that is partly because promoted teams tend to be relegated in first season so SSS is really only a statistical quirk that if three teams survive first season, the chances are much higher that one of them will be relegated next. That is statistics, not a syndrome..

Way too early to predict.
Anyone out of the top 6 could go pear shaped in no time.

This, looks like there will be a mass manager change over the summer so it is impossible to say. Looks like Everton, West Ham and Southampton are going to make 'progressive' appointments. This probably means that around Christmas the usual suspects will be drafted in to 'do a job'.

I quite like the idea of clubs only being able to change their manager in the transfer window.